


Style Three: The Water Tribes

by rewmariewrites



Series: tattoo: the four nations [3]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Tattoos, Badass Katara (Avatar), Cultural Differences, Cultural References, Northern Water Tribe, POV Katara (Avatar), Southern Water Tribe, Stubborn Katara (Avatar), Tattoos, Water Tribe(s) (Avatar), Waterbending & Waterbenders, how did the bloodbending arc even go i can't remember its been a hot minute, in this house we shove canon in the corner and call it good, waterbending tattoos are so cool and I want the healing ones so bad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-08
Updated: 2018-10-08
Packaged: 2019-07-28 09:11:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16238582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rewmariewrites/pseuds/rewmariewrites
Summary: Katara’s first tattoo is awful.It isn’t painful, because waterbending tattoos are only painful for a few seconds before the water soothes it away, but it’s awful. It’s ugly.





	Style Three: The Water Tribes

**Author's Note:**

> author's note: edited 06/03/2019  
> it reads a lot better now, hoo boy

Katara’s first tattoo is awful. 

It isn’t  _ painful _ , because waterbending tattoos are only painful for a few seconds before the water soothes it away, but it’s  _ awful _ . It’s  _ ugly _ . 

(It’s also  _ hers  _ in a way that not much else is - given to her in a scroll that was her mother’s and her grandmother’s and her great-grandmother’s - and sure, she isn’t  _ really _ a waterbender yet because she doesn’t  _ really _ know how to do anything, but -

_ But. _ She is the only waterbender left in the entirety of the South Pole, and there’s no way to tell if there’s anyone left in the North Pole, so as far as she knows she’s the closest thing to a waterbender this world would ever see again.)

She doesn’t even do it in the right  _ place _ . 

The tattoos are supposed to go on her face, given to her by a trusted teacher or mentor. But it’s just her, and ice is too blurry and water is too unreliable to use as a mirror, so she painstakingly draws the pattern out just above both her knees. 

What are supposed to be three fine, delicate lines come out shaky and coarse, but that was the last of the ink, and there’s no way to fix it, so she makes up her mind, screws up her courage, and loves them anyways. 

Maybe she’s a waterbender, maybe she isn’t, but she’s going to  _ try _ , and these tattoos are for her and her mom and her grandma and her great-grandma, so that she can look at the shaky blue lines and always remember that her family knew that waterbending is important, even if the rest of the world didn’t. 

Katara is twelve when she tattoos herself that first time, scared and alone, clinging to the memories of a dead mother and an absent father. 

She’s fourteen when they find the Avatar. She’s still scared, still feels alone, but she’s ready to leave and become something  _ bigger. _ She’ll never forget where she came from, will never forget the traditions of her culture, because they are right there on her skin. 

But she also has a  _ responsibility _ \- what if the North Pole is still out there? What if they can teach her and fill in the gaps of her learning and make her into something  _ better _ ?

The tattoos are a promise that someday she’ll be better than a twelve year old with no control, reaching for things she can’t have.

 

When she gets to the North Pole, after all that time spent travelling with Aang and Sokka and Appa and Momo, after all that time thinking that the South Pole was all that was left, she finds out that the North is flourishing and she is  _ furious _ .

How could they live in splendour while their Southern brothers and sisters are  _ dying _ ? How could they throw festivals, hold council, attend  _ school _ , while their Southern counterparts are struggling to  _ simply survive _ ? 

Katara runs a hand over the fabric of her skirt, which covers the ugly tattoos above her knees, then grips them tight. She will drain this place of  _ every last piece of knowledge they have _ so she can take it back to her people. If the North won’t help, she will sure as shit  _ steal _ and  _ lie _ and  _ cheat _ her way to a better future for the South.  _ Fuck _ anyone who stands in her way, and  _ fuck _ the North Pole for not giving a shit about  _ her people _ . 

When Katara finally finishes her training - in  _ both _ combat and healing arts,  _ thank you very much _ \- her rage has cooled, just a little. She understands, kind of, why the North hasn’t reached out to the South. 

It is a  _ reason _ , not an  _ excuse _ . She can accept the facts and still be mad ( _ angryfuriousseething _ ) about them. 

(Besides, Sokka’s girlfriend turned into the  _ literal moon _ to save them all, so she can’t really be  _ that  _ mad.)

 

Before they leave, Katara earns three more tattoos.

The tattoos that mark her as a waterbender - the exact match to the large, clunky ones she had done herself, at twelve - are now set delicately across both cheekbones and the sides of her nose, up near her eyes. The three lines are so fine that they are barely thicker than the strands of her hair, and they’re done in the same light blue the Southern Water Tribe favours.

It surprises Master Pakku that she refuses, at least for her basic waterbending tattoos, the bold dots and triangles that the Northern style prefers, and it takes  _ everything she has _ not to sneer in his face. Her bending came from the South,  _ belongs _ to the South, and the South is who she will honor and represent first and foremost. 

So much of her identity is caught up in other cultures, now - in airbending and Northern styles and even in  _ firebending _ (or, at least the avoidance of it) - that she finds she  _ needs _ this. Maybe seeing these tattoos finally inked on her face as they were always meant to be (instead of the sad, hidden attempts of a little girl who knew  _ nothing _ ) will help to counteract the  _ debilitating homesickness _ she feels  _ all the time. _

The healing mastery tattoos are performed under the instruction of her healing master, in the hut where they practiced every day, in front of all the children who had been her classmates. They look on as she painstakingly draws line after line: three ringing the skin under each knuckle on all of her fingers, three ringing the skin below her wrist bone on each arm, and three bold dots extending from the outer corner of each eye. These lines are a dark blue, almost black, darker even than the brown of her skin, just the way the North prefers. The trick to these is to make sure the ink implants itself firmly into the thin skin of the hands and face, but does not go so deep as to poison the bloodstream. 

Only a skilled medic could do such a thing, which is, she supposes, the point.

(Because she has never learned healing from anyone but a Northern master, she chooses to ink their patterns on her body. Maybe no one outside the Water Tribes will know the difference in the two styles, but  _ she  _ will, and that’s a good enough reason. It’s important to give credit where credit is due, after all.) 

The last tattoos are her combat mastery tattoos, and they’re performed immediately after her last battle with Master Pakku. 

He hadn’t landed a hit on her, not  _ once _ , and when he’d finally stepped out of his defensive stance and brought the ink out of his robes right then and there, Katara had  _ cried _ . 

She fought  _ so hard _ for this, to be taught by this man, to be the  _ only _ woman under his tutelage, to be able to defend herself and protect others, and to be declared a  _ master _ \- 

\- she tattoos herself right there, kneeling in the snow at Master Pakku’s feet, in the middle of their combat field, her fellow apprentices looking on (including Aang, who is grinning and whooping and dancing and laughing and crying all at once). 

Her vision is blurry, her sweaty skin is  _ freezing _ in the cold air, and she is taking heaving, gulping breaths in a pathetic attempt to stop crying. Her mind is sharp and focused, though - concentrating on Master Pakku’s clear, sharp words as he tells her what to do - and her hands are steady, just like her healing master taught her.

( _ Steady like the flow of the tide, even in the face of a winter storm. _ ) 

The first is a thin line, starting at two points at her hairline above her eyes, coming to a point just between her eyebrows. Then again, exactly the same, but a fingers-width inside the first line. Next is on her chest - a thin line starting at each shoulder and coming to a point at the hollow of her chest between her breasts, and another, only a fingers-width inside the first. 

Master Pakku does the last two sets: first on the nape of her neck, starting at her hairline and coming to a point at the largest vertebrae at the top of her back, then on the back of each calf, starting on either side of the knee and coming to a point just below the bulge of muscle found there. He lingers for a moment  - only the length of a breath, a heartbeat - before patting her gently on the shoulder and walking away. 

She stays there, kneeling in the practice field, crying, until Aang goes to fetch Sokka and together they talk her down.

(Later,  _ daysmonthsyears _ later, before he faces down the Fire Lord but after they leave the North Pole, Katara helps Aang with his own combat mastery tattoos. They had had to skip the one on the forehead, for obvious reasons, but he wore the lines on his chest and at the nape of his neck and on the backs of his legs with pride, just like he wore his airbending arrow, and like he would wear the dragons Zuko gave him.

Katara was never sure, but she suspected the stains on his fingers - that always looked like he had been playing in fresh dirt - were from Toph.)

 

It saddens Katara that she is surprised when her mastery tattoos honestly don’t  _ change _ anything. She thought they might - she thought that they would help her become more sure of herself, that maybe the physical reminder of the responsibility she has to herself and her people would make her less scared in the face of danger.

Sometimes, they do. She sees the lines on her hands, on her chest, and knows that she is capable of  _ anything _ , that there are people out there who taught her all they knew and deemed her worthy of the highest honor her people could give to a bender.

Sometimes, though, she feels like an imposter. Like a  _ child _ running around in an adult’s skin, playing at heroes and monsters, pretending to be the good one, the strong one, the one with all the answers. The tattoos on her skin are a brand, on those days, a too-tight shackle tying her to everything she has lost and has yet to lose. On the worst days, the days it is all too much, she finds the nearest body of water and  _ screams _ at it until it retreats into the earth, and then cries until it flows warily back. 

(Katara didn’t know water could feel  _ wary _ until she drains an entire spring with her misplaced anger, and spends the better part of seven hours coaxing it back to the surface again. The Gaang had been angry she had been gone so long, and she only made it worse when she found she couldn’t bring herself to explain why she had been gone.)

Even though she has bouts of it, she doesn’t  _ truly  _ feel like she doesn’t deserve to be marked as a master until she learns to bloodbend. 

_ It’s the highest honor,  _ the old woman whispers,  _ the most difficult of the water arts, the truest and purest power, the most connected a waterbender will ever be to the moon. _

(Would Yue agree with that? Katara doesn’t think so.)

The first time Katara succeeds, the old woman shows her her own bloodbending tattoos, then tells Katara that she  _ deserves  _ them.

To say Katara is disgusted is an understatement. She doesn’t want to taint her body with a physical reminder of the  _ destruction _ she can cause with her newfound skill; the feeling of blood bending to her wishes, vibrating with its willingness to obey,  _ betraying _ the body it inhabits - the feeling still tickles at her fingers in a way she spends  _ weeks _ trying to physically scrub away. 

(It feels  _ good _ , is the problem, it feels  _ powerful  _ and  _ seductive _ and  _ easy _ \- )

Her body, it  _ is _ tainted, now, even without the physical presence of this mastery tattoo. Now that she’s violated another person, taken their free will, taken control of something that was never meant to be hers, she feels  _ dirty _ . She _ does not want  _ to claim mastery of this disgusting, alluring power.

_ But then she does it again _ .

She does it again, and it hadn’t been anywhere  _ near _ a full moon.  _ That means mastery, then, _ she thinks, even as she swallows back bile at the thought. Katara is powerful enough to control the blood in someone’s body at any phase of the moon, when legends told her that only the  _ most powerful _ could bend blood at the  _ full _ moon.

So, she considers it. She spends a  _ long _ time considering it, staring at the scrolls Master Pakku had given her, the ones that outline the different tattoos she could give to any student she may take. He never thought she would need to give herself another tattoo. He had laughed when she asked about this particular tattoo, because he never thought that  _ anyone _ would need to give themselves  _ this _ tattoo.

( _ Bloodbending is just a myth,  _ he said)

( _ Only the most powerful benders, who could rival the Avatars, could bend blood _ , he said.)

( _ You will never be able to, so do not fret _ , he said.)

She does not want to taint herself, but she is already tainted. She already has the nightmares,  the trauma. Maybe this is no less than she deserves: to know, every time she looks in a mirror, that she’s done something unforgivable.

And maybe,  _ maybe _ , it could be a warning. To those with any knowledge of waterbending, this tattoo could be a chance to  _ run _ in the other direction. To those who don’t know - well. Maybe some of them will survive to tell others to watch out for those with this tattoo, to watch out for the waterbender who looks like she has split herself open with her hubris. 

(If Katara has her way, she will be the  _ only one _ . Bloodbending  _ will _ die with her, even if she has to kill it herself.)

So, she borrows red ink from Zuko, makes him hold the mirror, and uses her bending to push the ink deep and stark into her skin. Across her bottom lip, down her chin, and down the line of her throat until it meets the point of her combat mastery tattoo in the hollow of her chest between her breasts. One thick, straight line, the width of her first two fingers.

She does not take the pain away - as a healer, she knows how to leave pain in the body. She wants to  _ feel _ this tattoo, the way it weighs her body down and makes her uncomfortable and irritated and weak.

Zuko doesn’t ask what it means. He already knows.

(Katara never got any more tattoos, because there were no more for her to get. Her culture is not like Zuko’s, with its extravagant art and multi-step masteries. In Katara’s culture, either you are a master, or you are not. No one before her had  _ ever _ had all the mastery tattoos, and no one after her will, either.)

(Korra, sometimes, when she’s small, asks what the “big red tattoo” means. Katara just smiles and says, “It’s rage, my dear. Rage and grief and misery, all wrapped up in temptation. This is what you get when you give into the darker parts of yourself.”

Korra wouldn’t understand until she met Amon, until she met Noatak. Upon his death, she gives him the long red tattoo, across his bottom lip and down his chin and throat, ending at the hollow of his chest.)

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me at rewmariewrites.tumblr.com


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